Art & Architecture

This station, built in tunnel with two accesses built cut-and-cover, is distinguished by its vibrant and flamboyant use of bright colours. The platform walls and lower parts of the walls in the upper levels are clad in modular polymer concrete panels in vivid hues. The principal colour is cobalt blue, with each access and its corresponding portion of the platforms assigned its own pair of signature colours: magenta and violet accents for the western access, green and sky blue for the eastern one. Both through their intense colour and through their rectangular shapes with semicircular protrusions that interlock with neighbouring panels, these panels give a wonderful energy and life to the station’s design.

White disks in between the coloured panels add rhythm, becoming closer together as one approaches the stairs up from the platforms; stepped semicircular bas-reliefs in the disks point toward the nearer exit.

Enhancing the feeling of movement, stainless-steel tubular elements run and curve along the length of the platform, serving at different places as decorative elements, handrails, and supports for benches. A remarkable example of the integration of art and architecture, the panelling and tubes were planned by sculptor Jean-Noël Poliquin in close collaboration with the architects.

The intense colours are paired with the bold lines of the concrete volumes and headhouses, particularly in the main (Papineau) access, at the east end of the trainroom. Here, the ticket hall is located over the tunnel mouth; it overlooks the end of the tunnel within a volume whose angular lines emphasize its underground, mineral nature.

The escalator shaft in this access connects to the trainroom at a 60° angle. This angle, and the equilateral triangles it forms, are repeated throughout the upper levels of the station, forming a unifying architectural theme.¹ The most notable examples are the triangular coffers of the ceilings, which are arranged in a dramatic stepped fashion in the escalator shafts.

The secondary, unstaffed Fabre access connects with the trainroom via a transept that crosses the trainroom vault at right angles, two-thirds of the way down its length.

At the surface level, the station’s headhouses were imagined as if the escalator wells emerged from below as open-air entrances in public squares that happened to be covered by airy steel and glass pavilions, admitting generous sunlight. Accordingly, the concessions and service facilities are clustered together at the far sides of the lots, leaving as much continuity as possible between the passenger areas of the headhouse and the small, landscaped open plazas outside. ¹

The Papineau headhouse, in particular, leaves walkways on all sides of the stairwell mouth, including a bridge that overlooks the deep volume of the stairwell below; the opening beyond the bridge admits sunlight deep into the stairwell. The coloured panels continue within and outside the headhouses, narrowing down to just one of the signature colours corresponding to each access: sky blue in the eastern headhouse, purple in the western one.

The bold colours and powerful design make this station aesthetically brilliant and definitely worth a trip.